Edexcel IGCSE Physics what we used

Posted on June 17, 2025 by ofamily

Finally, my oldest has written her last IGCSE exam, which was Physics and we are all starting to relax a bit. I am not going to lie but the last 2 subjects (Maths and Physics) have been our most stressful. But it got me thinking that there must be other home educating parents out there who are feeling a bit stressed about Physics so I thought I would put together a quick summary of the Physics resources that worked for us. All of these are the resources that my oldest used for her preparations for her exams and all of these are the exact same resources that my youngest is current also using (he was already started with his IGCSE Physics and Biology).

To start with we did Physics a bit differently to our other subjects and that is because we discovered the lovely Lara from Theatre of Science. We did every one of her IGCSE lessons and we also did the homework activities that she set us. Honestly she is brilliant and I must be completely honest and say discovering her lessons took a huge weight off my shoulders. Both my kids love her lessons. And I will mention she does live lessons and she also has recorded lessons so you can pick which one works for your kiddo (I have 1 kid you LOVES the lives lesson and 1 kid who would rather watch her recorded lessons).

To go along with her lessons we used 3 books. Our Collins Edexcel IGCSE Student book, which gives some good explanations. Our CGP Edexcel IGCSE Revision Guide (more summarized) and our CGP Edexcel IGCSE Workbook, which we used for extra questions, we did these questions as we covered the work in Lara’s lessons.

  • CGP Edexcel IGCSE Physics Workbook

All three books were well used but if I had to only pick 2 I would stick with the Revision Guide and the Workbook (One of the things that I really liked about these 2 books is the fact that they are very clear about what content is only included in Paper 2 – I found this invaluable).

While we were working through the Theatre of Science lessons we did also use Cognito. Now I chose to stick with the free version of Cognito and we did not do every single lesson on Cognito, I would say we did about 70% of the lessons. I did find it was useful and my daughter enjoyed working through the videos and answering the questions (My daughter likes the Cognito format of quick explanation videos followed by a few questions to test that she has understood – she used Cognito for Biology, Physics and Maths).

Okay so those were the resources that we used while we were covering the content.

When it came time to revise we did include a few other sources. For revision we did sometimes go back and rewatch some of the Theatre of Science content but we also did watch content from Science with Hazel. I feel like Theatre of Science is more detailed explanation and Science with Hazel is more summarized, so the one if good for when you are covering the content for the first time and the other is more suitable for revision.

We also used our Edexcel IGCSE Phsyics 10-minute test book and our CGP Edexcel IGCSE Physics cards.

I liked having both resources but I know sometimes you have to choose and if I had to choose one I would choose the Question and Answer cards. These cards together with our CGP Edexcel IGCSE Revision Guide were the main source of revision notes/ questions that my daughter used over and over. I honestly would not want to revise without these two resources.

And finally when it came to practice questions I did two things. I went onto the Edexecl site and downloading lots of their past papers and marks schemes (which is a must). You want to make sure your kiddo works through quite a few past papers (full papers and timed).

But I also found the Physics and Maths Tutor site was brilliant. What I liked about the Physics and Maths Tutor site is they group the questions into topics. So as you kiddo revises Forces you can print out a pack of forces question for them to work through, and yes the questions are exam style questions and yes all answers are included.

That is everything that we used and how we used it. I hope this gives someone else some ideas about potential resources. But honestly it is not as scary as you may imagine at first, just dive in and go for it.

For those of you who want them here are Amazon links for all the books I mentioned

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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Factology – Sharks

Posted on June 15, 2025 by ofamily

My son has always been fascinated with Sharks so when I saw they had released a new Factology book on Sharks I asked if I could get a review copy to see if it was something that my son would have enjoyed.

Although the Factology books are a bit young for my son (recommended ages 8-11), the fact that I spent many hours searching for good non-fiction books for my son (he went through a stage where all he would read was very specific non-fiction books on things like sharks or snakes) means I am now always keen to write reviews on the books that I searched for when he was younger (I really did spend hours searching for these types of books).

Okay so what can you expect to find in this Shark book?

It covers quite a lot. And it is quite wide in what it covers – even things like cage diving and being an Aquarist. (I do not like the idea of cage diving but I am glad that books like this are including it as I think it encourages the kids to think about whether they consider cage diving good or bad.)

I have to admit that we found the entire book interesting but the pages which really got our attention where the ones that covered the sharks body. We found these pages particularly informative and something that I think other shark books for this age don’t always cover in such good detail.

I really thought they did a good job with the illustrations on these pages and they way they explained how things like the breathing and sight works. I was really impressed with this side of the book.

The younger version of my son would have spent hours with this book. In fact the page that they compare the sizes of the sharks reminded me of a 8-year old who unrolled a massive sheet of paper in the passage and spent ages marked out the different lengths of ocean creatures on it. I could imagine him taking that page and making his own version.

I also know the pages on the Meg, The Great White, Hammerheads and Rays would have been read and re-read countless times.

I enjoyed reading this book, I think they covered a wide range of shark related items, it was informative and they included some brilliant illustrations. I am in no doubt that if my son was a few years younger this would have been a firm favourite, in fact it would have been one of those books which he would have read countless times and he would have used it in his many animal projects that he was always working on.

So if you do have a kiddo you enjoys reading non-fiction and who is fascinated with creatures like sharks then I would say this is one for you.

I was given a free copy of this book but you can find it on Amazon here

Factology Sharks

Admin – I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we recommend.

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Edexcel IGCSE Maths Past Paper walkthroughs – the person we recommend.

Posted on May 29, 2025 by ofamily

We have already written our first Edexcel IGCSE Maths Paper and we have Paper 2 in a weeks time so as you can imagine our lives are all about Maths past papers at the moment.

As with all things on YouTube there is always a bit of choice on who to use for Maths Walkthroughs. Quite by accident we found someone that we really like and we been using a lot of his content. So I thought I would introduce him – Mr Flynn

He has uploaded walkthroughs for Edexcel IGCSE past papers from 2018 all the way through to 2023, I think last time I checked there were 39 walkthroughs (he has Paper 1 and Paper 2 content).

Now his videos are quite long but that is because he works through each question step by step and explains everything very clearly. But please don’t be put off by the length of his videos. In the beginning we watched the entire video but as we did more and more past papers we would skip the questions that we were happy with and just watch the questions that we needed some help on. So really it is up to you, but the important thing is he has proper step by step answers and he even shows what he inputs into his calculator when he uses it.

He have found his walkthroughs incredibly helpful, and we like the way he explains his answers and workings. So if you are doing Edexcel IGCSE Maths have a look you just might agree with us and find his videos as helpful as we have.

Oh and I know this is a short post but we are very busy on this end with both our Maths and Physics revision.

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An IGCSE Maths site that we love

Posted on May 10, 2025 by ofamily

We are going a bit Maths crazy on this side, my daughter writes her first IGCSE Maths paper next week and then the second paper in a months time. And I will admit Maths is not one of the subjects that she enjoys or finds easy. With Maths she really has to work (and she really has been, I am very proud of how hard she has been working).

And yes we have a good student book and we have multiple workbooks but with our Maths revision that we have been doing we actually stumbled upon an amazing site which we have been using a lot and it is FREE so I wanted to share it because really it has been one of the best Maths resources that we have found. It is called 1st Class Maths. And yes when you first see it, it is advertised as a GCSE Maths site but honestly most of the content is what you will need for Edexcel IGCSE Maths.

When you first go to the site you will get a page like this.

We then clicked through to the GCSE Revision (Edexcel)section and you will get one of the best breakdown’s of Maths topics for this stage. Honestly this page and I have become best friends.

Really how amazing is this – find the topic that your kid needs to revise, you can click on the link for the explanation video (by the way his explanations are excellent and have become one of my go to places for Maths explanations). Then once your kiddo has refreshed their understanding you can download the question PDF and the answer PDF.

Now the questions are great, they really are. He always gives a lot of examples for the kids to work through but for me the answers are GOLD. Because unlike some the workbooks that we have been using his answers show his working. And this was one of the things that we found we were really needing, we kept getting questions for workbooks or other sources with just an answer and no workings, and it was driving us crazy. But on this site you can see step by step what he is doing and it really helps.

I really can not stress how much this has helped us. The whole combination of the video with examples and proper step by step solutions. I actually wish we had stumbled upon the site earlier. So please do not be put-off by the fact that it is advertised as GCSE Maths, honestly your kiddo will find a lot of good content on here.

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Moving to Mars – a book that inspired some writing

Posted on April 11, 2025 by ofamily

A short while ago we were sent a book – Moving to Mars, Building a Colony on the Red Planet. Now I must admit my son has always had an interest in space and lately he has been quite into fantasy space themed books and programs, stories where people need to set up a new world, so when this book arrived I was sure he would be interested.

He started reading it and although he found the facts about Mars interesting it was really when he got into the ideas on how you could potentially make Mars habitable that it really got him thinking. The ideas of how do you start this off, when you arrive on a new planet what would you do first? How would you deal with the atmosphere and the different climate? What about growing food? or Water? And where do you live? How do you structure and build on a “hostile” planet?

I could see these thought really got him thinking and we had a few discussions about what could work and why (I must admit after reading about Mars I would not be one of the people to volunteer to go and live there). But my son is more adventurous and he loves thinking through what would be the problems, how could you overcome these issues and would you really be able to form a new colony on a new uncharted planet.

As a home educator I found the the first part of the book was filled with lots of interesting facts about Mars and I have to admit that I think they managed to explain some rather complex concepts really well (better than I would have ever been able to explain them).

But the second part, the part which is more about possible options and possible ways to live on Mars (so not so factual) is the part that I think most home educators would find fascinating and would be the part that I think could inspire some fun creative writing and even some research. I have always liked books which inspire imagination and thinking outside of the box and I think this one does that. It combines facts with potential options which makes it even more engaging and interesting.

My son and I both enjoyed learning more about Mars and going on a bit of a “Would that really work” journey.

I have not spotted this book at our local library or bookstore yet (I think it may still be a bit new) but I did see it on Amazon so for those interested I am including an Amazon Link here – Moving To Mars.

Admin – As I mentioned above I was sent this book. However the fact that the moving to Mars bit inspired my son had nothing to do with us getting a copy of the book, he picked it up and read it because he thought it was interesting.

I do include Affiliate links. If you follow an affiliate link and go on to purchase that product, I will be paid a very small commission, however your cost will remain the same. I only include affiliate links for products that we use and recommend.

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